Suchergebnisse

Civil rights legislation of the sixties and seventies sought to end racial discrimination in the United States; doing so required that the federal government establish an official ethnoracial taxonomy in order to specify who was and was not covered by the various statutes. Specifically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, and the Home Mortgage Act of 1975 required federal agencies to identify particular groups to be monitored for evidence of discrimination. Since these statutes were enacted, scholars and activists have argued over their political effects. In fact, the questions raised are legion: Who has benefitted from civil rights protections? Has discrimination diminished or simply morphed into new forms? Who counts as a minority and on what grounds? How has the massive immigration of the last four decades intersected civil rights reform? Should foreign nationals qualify for civil rights protections? If yes, how do more recent claims to diversify fit with older notions that civil rights legislation as a means of redressing past wrongs?

John D. Skrentny's (2002) analysis of civil rights reform in the US during the 1960s is investigated. An overview of Skrentny's central contention is presented, emphasizing his assertion that civil rights given to African Americans were essentially extended to other ethnic groups. It is subsequently maintained that Skrentny's interpretation of the US Civil Rights movement suggests that African Americans have been perceived as the nation's fundamental ethnic minority group. Several difficulties with Skrentny's account of civil rights reform are highlighted: legitimate minorities are erroneously differentiated from illegitimate ones; non-African American ethnic groups were viewed as politically inactive during the Civil Rights movement; evidence that demonstrates the political activity of non-African American ethnic groups was overlooked. It is concluded that Skrentny's assessment of the Civil Rights movement has perpetuated racial tension; consequently, methodological recommendations for providing a more comprehensive & accurate treatment of ethnic minority groups' participation in civil rights reform are offered. J. W. Parker

After the Civil War, a new wave of workers' protest swept the country as trade lunions, third parties, eight-hour leagues, and a host of other reform associations sprang up in many cities and towns. For the three decades following the war, no one organization was hegemonic. Instead, there was a proliferation of associations, often advocating quite different programs of labor reform. Accounts of the more prominent organizations such as the Knights of Labor (KOL,) Populists, and American Federation of Labor (AFL) are well known. These institutions, however, represented only the tip of the iceberg and were surrounded by more obscure associations such as the Workingmen's Union, the Workingmen's Assembly, the Workingmen's Convention, the Union Labor party, and the United Labor party, to name only a few. Several attempts were made to unite these disparate associations into a single front, but the efforts were largely unsuccessful and often had difficulty surviving for more than a year. The Junior Sons of '76, the National Labor Union, and the United Labor party each disbanded as participants failed to agree on a common platform of postwar reform.

Why has labor played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than it has in other advanced industrial societies? Victoria Hattam demonstrates that voluntarism, as American labor's policy was known, was the American Federation of Labor's strategic response to the structure of the American state, particularly to the influence of American courts. The AFL's strategic calculation was not universal, however. This book reveals the competing ideologies and acts of interpretation that produced these variations in state-labor relations. Originally published in 1993. The Princeto

Arnesen too quickly dismisses recent whiteness scholarship without first taking stock of the ways in which this work has transformed the research agenda in labor history and beyond. Whiteness scholars have made three important contributions: theorizing class as identification, historicizing race, and centering the nation. After briefly elaborating on each of these contributions, I argue that this body of new research has been limited both by its inattention to the specificity of ethnic identification and by its acceptance of the standard assimilation narratives of American immigration history. Addressing these limitations points the way to some fruitful lines of new research.